Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novel Of The 1930's

I love The Hobbit, Right Ho Jeeves and Rebecca, but not enough to assume any of those three are better than some of the hard hitters in here I haven't read.

Celine, though I want to read Absalom, Absalom soon

The Waves remains my favorite novel ever (not just my favorite Woolf), partly because it's so odd. But At Swim-Two-Birds is a close runner-up because it's so funny.

The Faulkner might be a distant third but, it's rather depressing.

Several good ones here.

I've read half of these. For me the choice wasn't hard because the criterion is one's subjective love for a book. Therefore, At Swim-Two-Birds.

One of Isherwood's best, Fitzgerald's flawed good novel, Woolf's often eloquent and often annoying prose poem, the only Céline one should read -- those are my choices.

Does anyone read Malreaux these days?

I liked that one, the only one of his I've read: seemed like a good action novel, with principled/determined, somewhat deterministic characters, perhaps over-extended (I probably recalled the saying, "Better a live scoundrel than a dead hero")---some Graham Greene appeal w Russian dressing, also: sophisticated, yet understandable, asides re economics.
Voted for As I Lay Dying (can't touch this).

Feel much for qualified with this grouping. Could be *As I Lay Dying* but might go for Exupery.

We are living on a wandering planet...From time to time, thanks to the aeroplane, it reveals to us its origin: a lake connected with the moon unveils hidden kinship.

Lord Alfred: I can understand being annoyed with Woolf. I am sometimes annoyed with her too. But at the same time, that prose is just so intoxicatingly rich.

Plus, let us remember that The Waves was an experiment. By design. Meant to pull the rug out from under what you want a book to be.

I have read (I think) quite a few books. The reason that one stands out is that it's trying to be something different. Successfully/unsuccessfully? I dunno. I am just glad it exists, and that writers tried to stretch the boundaries. I admire the attempt even if it didn't quite succeed in every aspect for every reader.

I love the novel like I do a relative, including her annoyances.

Yeah. In 1999ish (probably) I went to the National Press Club to see Michael Cunningham speak about _The Hours_.

He said, and I quote, "I'm married to Virginia Woolf, with all the love and annoyance that implies."

And I'm like dude lol same

I've got to engage with Woolf properly at some point but I carry this huge class war chip, so Swim-Two-Birds

Yeah, BLOOMSBURY is A Thing for you Britishes.

she said stupid things about Joyce

Ugh this is hard; so many books that are The Best at the particular thing that they do, but what they do falls into very different categories. I like Absalom Absalom better than As I Lay Dying, but As I Lay Dying is probably a better book? And Rebecca is obviously the very best at being Rebecca; many have tried to copy the formula but no one's ever done it better. But my heart might actually belong to Night Flight because the ending is so gorgeous.

Céline over Tolkien, the only two I've read. I liked the War is Hell opening of Voyage au bout de la nuit, but the misanthropic doctor routine (which is well over the last half) got tiresome.

I've been inoculated from having to read Absalom, Absalom by "Distant Early Warning" by Rush.

I have to go with my man Céline and disagree it's his only worth reading. Voyage is unfuckwithable, but Mort à Crédit is really cool in its own way as well, annoyances notwithstanding.
Others well deserving of a vote would be As I lay dying and At Swim-Tow-Birds. And to a lesser extent Rebecca and The Hobbit.
I did read the Malraux and enjoyed it for what it is: a serious and dark account of horrific political history.
I for one will not hesitate to say that I absolutely hated The Waves. Oh, and Absalom Absalom too.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies is worth mentioning, if only for the last chapter, which is one of the most devastating chunks of prose in all 20c literature, and which you are totally unprepared for by the rest of the book. Honestly, couldn't believe how good/powerful it was. Didn't think Waugh had it in in him.

Also, NV otm about Woolf; she really exposes herself with her comment "An illiterate, underbred book it (Ulysses) seems to me: the book of a self-taught working man, & we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, & ultimately nauseating."

She was a snob and an anti-Semite who wrote some of the century's best non-fiction and novels.

Waugh was worse (and I might vote for him).

Handful of Dust is also 1930s, and I'd say Waugh's best novel.

Alfred, right. You know called her fiance "a penniless Jew" and married him anyway. I love her books but she's not a sainted character.

No one here called her one, I don't think? Those so-called modernists, man.

we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, & ultimately nauseating."

Well, she was] a snob (title of one of her late essays: "Am I A Snob?"), but her animus towards Joyce was typical competitiveness: he thought he was encroaching on similar terrain, etc.

FW sinks beneath the Waves...